Finally saw Dirk Gently and i felt it was ... kind of a mix? There's lots of good moments but then there's some weird, dramatic stuff that feels totally out of tone and ruins the show's pace. I mean Dirk by all means should get some flak for being a flake but this is way too much.

The pitch behind Riverdale -- Archie as a trashy teen soap with a dash of Twin Peaks murder mystery -- is one of those things where I couldn't immediately tell if it was a great idea or a terrible one.

I'm only as far as the pilot, but so far I'm in the "great" column. It's got a solid cast, and it walks the line of being self-aware enough that the genre tropes (teens making too-smart literary references while speaking in a way no human being has ever spoken) come across as more funny than obnoxious, while playing the whole thing straight enough that it never veers into self-parody.

The key to a series like this is that, whatever changes you make -- Archie's fucking his music teacher, Betty's on Adderall, Veronica's dad's in jail -- the characters still shine through. For the most part, the show does a pretty good job of that; Veronica in particular is basically perfect, and the pilot does an impressive job of establishing her complicated best friend/romantic rival relationship with Betty, rather than going the more obvious route of making them immediately antagonistic toward each other.

On the other hand, some of the supporting cast -- I'm thinking Kevin and Cheryl -- don't feel quite right; they feel more like they've been changed to fit the genre tropes than worked into them organically. But I'll cop to not exactly being an Archie expert, and most of what I know about Kevin and Cheryl amounts to literally judging books by their covers.

Also the pilot doesn't have nearly enough Jughead, but I like how he's worked into the story: he's the narrator and, so far, an outside observer rather than an active participant. But the end of the episode hints at a bigger role to come, and also sets up a mystery related to some kind of as-yet-unexplained falling-out between him and Archie that is frankly more compelling than the "who killed whatsisface?" mystery at the center of the series.

(Which isn't anything new, mind. Twin Peaks was never really about finding out who killed Laura Palmer, and the first season of True Detective was really about finding out what happened between the two leads rather than the identity of the killer. ...even if that wasn't much of a mystery either and turned out to be exactly what you figured it would be from the first act of the first episode.)

It's a little slow paced sometimes, but yeah, that thing was one of about three shows to actually win my attention last year. Sci-fi any harder than talc is pretty hard to come by. Also I'm pretty damn sure Miller is my spirit animal. I guess I should read the fucking books. I'm only a little disappointed in anyone naming a ship Rocinante, fictional or otherwise. It's one of those little-too-on-the-nose sort of things. It's like if I was still pissed about a shark that bit me* so I went and got a trawler and named it OrcaPequodReliant INEVITABLY SUCCESSFUL IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES** and also I saw a movie once.***

Anyway if that's all I can think of to bitch about then it was probably pretty good.

The other two shows I gave a half-used fuck for were CO.W.-Boys of MMO Mesa, and The Good Place, which was the first NBC sitcom to hold my attention since... Cheers, I guess. Dancin Ted is the constant here.

* I've just realized that given the lifespan of some sharks, the juvenile bastard that nibbled me could very well still be alive. The scar has faded, but even if I'd lost multiple limbs I don't think I'd go chasing after a fish. I think I can let bygones be bygones and just put all the sushi behind us along with that little chunk you took out of my thigh. It's just weird to think that there might be a grown monster roaming around out there that tasted my flesh in the happy days of our youth and was probably high for a week afterward. That sort of thing might be habit forming.

**On the off chance I'm ever eaten by a shark in the Atlantic, please keep in mind that I apparently lived in a universe run by the Crypt Keeper, at least in terms of of ironic subtlety. If I'm eaten by a shark in the Pacific, that's either a very well traveled shark, or somebody lost track of the details.

*** My mother's initials are JAWS. And yeah, that looks fake as fuck on documents. Funny old world. Ho hum. Not an obvious goddamn prank at my expense or anything. Let's go work on a fishing boat or whatever it is mysterious forces demand of me in this wonderful world we share that in no way resembles a kaslakma asssssssssssassssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss/.':

Sharkey wrote:The other two shows I gave a half-used fuck for were CO.W.-Boys of MMO Mesa, and The Good Place, which was the first NBC sitcom to hold my attention since... Cheers, I guess. Dancin Ted is the constant here.

What impressed me the most about The Good Place was the pacing. Episodic sitcom/high-concept serial narrative is a hard damn balance to maintain, but they didn't just pull it off, they let every plot point gestate for just the right amount of time before being resolved.

It'll be tough to keep that up in season 2, especially given that now they also have to balance everyone's erased memories with advancing the plot, keeping the sense of momentum, and keeping the audience satisfied given all the character growth we saw in the first season. But I'm onboard.

Sharkey wrote:The other two shows I gave a half-used fuck for were CO.W.-Boys of MMO Mesa, and The Good Place, which was the first NBC sitcom to hold my attention since... Cheers, I guess. Dancin Ted is the constant here.

What impressed me the most about The Good Place was the pacing. Episodic sitcom/high-concept serial narrative is a hard damn balance to maintain, but they didn't just pull it off, they let every plot point gestate for just the right amount of time before being resolved.

1. Is Medium-Place Coke Lady real, or part of the demon force that is torturing (well making them torture themselves) the four main? Honestly, I could see it either way; after all, Janet was the one who took them there, and she's not part of the act... or... is she? After all, Micheal's explanation of how things work doesn't have to be 100%, or even 1%, true. Then again, why bother lying to them if he's just gonna erase their memories? Personally, I think Janet IS a fundamental part of the afterlife not really under either side's control, and she will, going forward, be the key to beating the demons.

2. WHY NOT JUST WRITE DOWN THE FUCKING SPOILER ITSELF RETARD oh taking a page from Rick and Morty and writing "6" instead of just everyone's names I guess

3. How the fuck are they going to escape in the long term? I suppose eventually the Good Place will have to intervene, because you can't win against someone who can just snap his fingers and mindblank you.

4. I'm interested in what they're going to do with Jason, considering of the four humans, he's really the only actually "bad" person. Elanor was never as bad as him while alive and has grown, there's no way any sane moral system would send Tahani to hell, and Chidi just needs to learn how to stop being such a wanker. Jason on the other hand was pretty shitty and hasn't learned anything since dying.

Friday wrote:Just finished The Good Place, and several things occur to me:

2. WHY NOT JUST WRITE DOWN THE FUCKING SPOILER ITSELF RETARD oh taking a page from Rick and Morty and writing "6" instead of just everyone's names I guess

Season 1 finale spoilers:

If Eleanor doesn't know how much time she has and wants to write down the single most important piece of information to retain, it is indeed "Find Chidi." Chidi is the only person she can trust and who can help her; it's more important to be set on that trail than to know that she's in the Bad Place.

Season 2 episodes 1-3 spoilers:

Of course, as it turns out, it doesn't matter. No matter what Michael does to stop them works; the four of them always eventually find each other and figure out they're in the Bad Place. The note as MacGuffin works that first time, but if she had never written it, the outcome would eventually have been the same.

Stranger Things season 2 was pretty good. The formula is the same as season 1 (nothing happens for 4 or 5 episodes, then all hell breaks loose in the latter half) but the characters get more of a chance to grow as people. Newcomers Sam Bob, Burke from Aliens, 008, Mad Max, and Billy the Bully(ied) are good too.

As usual, the kids manage to figure out exactly how to beat the bad guys by reading the 2nd edition Monster Manual, and making wild extrapolations, which I am 100% fine with. That's also how I deal with the problems in my life.

Unlike s1, the enemy this time isn't just a dangerous and difficult to kill murder-animal, but instead a creature with at least human level intelligence.

Steve continues to be my surprise favorite character. Motherfucker put all his points into Bats, and it's really working out for him.

Paul Reiser turning out to be not such a bad guy was a nice twist, too.

Sadly, I don't think Justice-Fist Hopper gets to deck ANYONE in this season, unless I'm forgetting. He still does a bunch of pretty cool stuff when he's not foolishly exploring alien tunnels alone for no reason.

But to make up for the lack of fisting, there's an entire episode devoted to 80s punk El and her merry band of 80s punk murder kids.